Perspectives of St John's: 1. The view from Monks Rise.

This is a series of sermons from October 2013 looking at St John's Digswell from a number of viewpoints. The first is from Monks Rise, the road that runs by the church and presents a dialogue with a fictional friend who is an outsider to the church.

      ‘So’, said my friend, ‘are you still involved with that church near you?’

I hadn’t seen him for some time, so I knew he would have no idea at all how much I was involved. He looked surprised and rather incredulous when I told him I was Priest in Charge at St John’s. That provided a pause for thinking time. He wondered – should he pursue the topic or let it go for something else? And if he pursued it, should it be as a challenge or just for interest? Something spurred him on and he decided to challenge.

I was ready. I knew what some of the questions would be. Probably more about the church in general than St John’s – but that’s fair enough. The way the church is perceived from outside through the media doesn’t really help and the church seems to do its best to confirm the prejudices. He began, ‘How can you believe all that stuff? It does not make sense.’ ‘What stuff?’ I asked, just putting a little pressure back to see if he had anything specific in mind, or whether he really wanted to talk about it, or alternatively just wanted to undermine any discussion there and then. He decided to take up the challenge himself.  ‘Well, all of it really. I mean, these days you can’t believe in God and prayer and miracles and all of that sort of thing -’ and then came the expected assertion which played right into my hand, ‘– after all, science has explained or will explain everything.’ 

I had to be careful here. I can get a bit carried away with the subject, so I simply offered the view that science cannot explain everything, despite the claims of enthusiastic practitioners. Not all agree, but many believe that there are limits to knowledge of every kind. But in parallel I also admitted that theology and its presentation by the churches needs to be more modest in its claims too. The interaction between the Christian world view and the secular world view is dominated too much by fundamentalists on both sides. He stopped to ponder the implications as I finished by saying that Christians have to accept that they live with uncertainty.

What would he try next? – Ah yes, the issue on which the media love to attack the church, human sexuality. Of course this is a question which divides many in the church, so I explained that there are a number of questions like this on which committed members of the church hold different views. One of the sad things is the way in which the discussions are often conducted. We shoot ourselves in the foot here, and this was particularly clear in the way the debate on women bishops was conducted. It’s not surprising that people outside the church cannot understand why there should be anything to debate. I was ready to concede that in areas like this the church is too inward looking and many of us have found this to be very frustrating. I don’t think he had expected that, but why try to defend something that could have been done much better?

The conversation continued to what we can call the historical challenge. Religion is bad because it causes great evil. This is just a selective historical view. It’s true that many wars and atrocities have happened in the name of religion, but it’s also true that much good has come out of the church. Certainly most of the atrocities of the 20^th century, which are probably the greatest in history, have been carried out by explicitly atheistic regimes. It’s people who are the problem – because, we can say, of what theologians call the fall.

It was interesting that the conversation was focussing on issues for the church in general, but I suppose that was not surprising. After all, it’s these prejudices that we have to get past if we are going to interest others in the church. So he followed with yet another common attitude, ‘Although I don’t really understand any of it, I suppose it’s OK if it’s just something you do in private.’ Well this just won’t do! It’s impossible to separate life as a Christian with life in the world around us. Christians are involved and are motivated by their faith. Just as an example, the parishes of St Albans Diocese gave away £2m last year and nationally the Church of England provides 20 % of the total voluntary service in the community, which comes to around 23 million hours per month. Some parts of our society would collapse if religion were an exclusively private thing.

At this point I thought it was time for me to take a lead since by now I’d heard many, though not all, of the common challenges to the church. ‘Have you ever been to St John’s?’ I asked. ‘It’s a lovely church, a place of prayer and worship for centuries. You should come and have a look. We’re having more and more concerts and events in the church, so there are opportunities outside services if you don’t want to come to one. But why not come to a service? We’re not a large congregation, but we love to come together and be with God.’ I think the invitation was a bit blunt: it’s not easy to get the approach right at the time. Still, it put him on the spot as I looked inquiringly at him. And after a short pause he gave a very honest answer. ‘You know, I don’t think I need that sort of thing.’

This is the real point we have to contend with. All the rest can be seen as excuses. I was very sympathetic. It was indeed a very honest answer. The way things are now, many people don’t think they need God, or at the least need to spend time with him. ‘Perhaps he’s there in the background, but I don’t need to do anything about it, I’ve got too much to do,’ they say. Most of us are not philosophers. We don’t ask the big questions of existence. Most likely we avoid them if they come to mind. They are not compelling questions because if all is going well they usually do not seem to relate to what is happening to us now. This is the question of relevance, of obvious, compelling relevance. I went into a quick thinking pause myself.

Relevance is a word that has been widely used in church discussions, often in relation to worship. Make it relevant to people and it will be fixed. This is too simplistic. It’s not to do with styles of worship. There are different ways of playing football, but people decide to play football because they like football, not because of the style of the team or the facilities of the club. My friend had put his finger on it and I thought I should work up his ideas to tell the people at St John’s. People have to become aware that they need God. Maybe some coming into St John’s would sense that he was there waiting for them. That’s why we have to keep this holy place holy… for us now and for when people need it.

 
End of pause. I had realised that there was a lot coming out of this conversation that needed further thought. Can we as a church community help awareness of a need for God? To do that, maybe we need to develop that awareness more ourselves. Plenty for us to think about. As for our conversation, it was moving on in another direction. I was glad to have had the discussion. Even if you don’t agree with what someone is telling you, it can certainly help clear the mind and bring things into focus.